Push for review of patents proposal

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The European Parliament has unanimously backed a motion for the
European Commission to review its proposal for a software patents
directive, in accordance with decisions taken by the parliament's
Legal Affairs Committee on February 2 and the Conference of
Presidents on February 17.

The motion was proposed by Polish MEP Jerzy Buzek. A number of
other groups, such as the PSE (socialists), ALDE (liberals), Greens
and GUE/NGL (Group of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left)
made similar motions independently.

A media release from the Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure (FFII), one of the groups which has opposed the
introduction of software patents in the EU, said all these motions
only mentioned "software patents", and if "computer-implemented
inventions" were mentioned then this was done only in quotes.

"The Newspeak from the European Patent Office has failed to
achieve its mission. It's now time for the Commission to propose a
solution to the problems that have been caused by the European
Patent Office, rather than to impose these problems on Europe,"
FFII president Hartmut Pilch said.

Last week, the European Union rejected a push to allow software
to be patented.

Pilch said the Danish government was coming under increased
pressure to withdraw its support for the EU Council's software
patent directive agreement of last May.

The push for adopting the directive was halted in December last
year when Poland backed away;
subsequently Denmark also reportedly said it would join Poland in
blocking the
directive if it was sought to be pushed through.

According to Pilch, many Danish media outlets had carried a
statement by Thomas Adelskov, IT spokesman of the Social Democrats,
saying:"We think so many people have pointed out problems in the
proposal that we ask the government that no decisions be made in
the EU on a software patent directive right now."

The Danish government holds power with support from the Social
Democrats.